Scottish Life in the 17TH Century. 285 



And there will be lappered milk kebbocks, 



And sowens and fails and baps, 

 With swat and well-scraped paunches, 



And brandy in stoups and in caps ; 

 And there will be meal-kail and castocks, 



With skink to sup till ve rive. 

 And roasts to roast on a brander 



Of flukes that were taken alive ; 



Scrapt haddocks, wilks, dulse, and tangle, 



And a mill of good sneishing to pree ; 

 When weary with eating and drinking, 



We'll rise up and dance till we dee. 

 Then fy, let us a' to the bridal, 



For there will be lilting there; 

 For Jock's to be married to Maggie, 



The lass wi' the gowden hair. 



Fadges were large, flat loaves ; brochan is oatmeal boiled 

 to a consistency somewhat thicker than gruel ; powsodie is 

 sheep's-head broth; drammock is meal and water mixed in a 

 raw state, what country people often call "beggar's porridge;" 

 scadlips is thin broth; lappered milk kebbocks are, of course, 

 sour milk cheese ; swats mean new ale ; skink may either refer to 

 drink in general, or to a strong soup made of cow's hams; and 

 dulse and tangle are names still familiar for edible kinds of 

 sea- weed. 



Ale was then a staple article of diet, and it was one of the 

 curious duties of the Town Council to fix annually, at the close 

 of har\-est, the price at which it was to be sold during the year 

 then ensuing. The meeting for this purpose was called the 

 assize of ale. There was also an assize of bread, which fixed 

 the charges that bakers were permitted to make ; and sometimes 

 the price of candles also was a subject of municipal regulation. 

 The price of the bread and the ale depended, of course, on the 

 abundance or scantiness of the harvest, and the records of that 

 early period reveal to us, despite the hilarity of the songster 

 of rural mirth, a community hovering painfully near the verge 

 of starvation. 



Agriculture throughout the country was of a very primitive 

 kind, and this district, long disturbed as it was by border raids 

 and clan feuds, had made but slow advance in the arts of peace. 

 Our friends the magistrates of Glasgow in their progress from 

 Dumfries to Carlingwark (now Castle-Douglas) found the 

 country a wide tract of black moss, extending for miles on each 

 side, overgrown with whins and broom, but utterly destitute both 

 of enclosures and trees, a few isolated dwellings, a cottage or a 

 farm house, alone indicating that the desolate-looking district 

 was not wholly uninhabited. Little grain was grown but coarse, 

 grey oats ; and the harvest was often so late, on account of the 

 dampness of the soil from \vant of draining, that it was no 

 uncommon thing for the crop to be cut amid frost and snow, and 



